Buddy's story

You know that I care
What happens to you
And I know that you care
For me too
So I don't feel alone
On the way to the stone
Now that I've found somewhere safe
To bury my bones
For any fool knows
A dog needs a home
A shelter
From pigs on the wing...





This is a hard entry for me to write. I'm writing it for you, future self, not because I think you will forget but because I want to say what happened, what really happened, at least through my here-in-2007 eyes so you can come back to this and see. I don't know if you will, or if you would, but I kind of need to do this anyway.

Our dog Buddy died December 21. He was 15. He was born on July 4th, 1992. He belonged to my wife, who adopted him as a puppy from Chelsea Kennels in Chelsea, MI. He was the runt of the litter, and she said when they opened the cage, all the other puppies scattered but he walked right up to her and that's when she knew he was hers.

The people at the kennel said he was the runt and she didn't want him, but all of the other dogs were $300 and they said all they had put into him was $40 worth of shots so she could have him for that.

After she got him home, she took him to the vet and he had a cancerous growth. They removed it and he was all hers. She originally wanted to name him Peanut but all of her friends called him Buddy, so that became his name.

I first met Buddy on my third date with her. I was walking up the stairs to her apartment when I met a beagle on the stairs. I put my hand out, and he sniffed it and wagged his tail and that was all it took. My wife said he bit her last date so I figured I was ahead of the curve, at least in the beagle department.

He went everywhere with her - on walks around the lake, to the video store (he was one of the few dogs allowed in the Uptown Hollywood Video), even to the supermarket - she would tie him outside and sometimes he would break loose and go in, padding up and down the aisles until he found her.

After we got married, he moved right in with us and the kids in the neighborhood all came to see the beagle. He could be standoffish - he'd tolerate a certain amount of petting from strangers and then let out a loud bay and back off from them. He got along with other dogs sort of OK, except for his pal Webster whom he liked a lot. He also liked our nephew quite a bit - when our nephew was very young he'd refer to Buddy as his son. He was always kind of cantankerous with me about getting off the couch, or if I would approach my wife while he was sitting on her lap.

He turned nine, ten, eleven. He seemed lonely, so we got another dog. He taught her how to act and taught me a lot about coaching (dogs do so much with attitude and example that people try to do with policies and process) Time went on, and his tricolor changed; first the brown went gray, then the black. He developed a cough; first in the morning, then morning and night, and finally all of the time. We took him to our regular vet, who acted like they'd never seen a sick dog before and a few hundred dollars of tests later said it was congestive heart failure and he'd have six months at the most. We started him on Lasix, which dehydrated him and stressed his kidneys, so he started peeing in the house, occasionally at first.

Twelve, thirteen, fourteen. He began to sleep in the living room because he could no longer get on and off the bed comfortably. Even with the lasix his cough got worse, and he got recurring ear infections which I had to treat with various medications, a muzzle, a handful of strips of cheese slices and q-tips. He stopped wanting to go on walks and when we would occasionally make him take a mile he would rarely be able to finish and I would carry him at least part way. Our other dog would try to play with him, bowing and barking, and he would bark at her while she ran in circles around him. He also started to have bouts of confusion, where he would stare off into space or bark at the wall for 10 minutes. His eyesight became worse as well.

Fifteen. His incontience became worse and worse; eventually he was peeing six times per day, in the house and finally in his bed. He started having seizures; I had been finding wet spots on the pillows and thought he was just drooling until I saw it happen one night. He started jerking and finally his whole body spasmed; he drooled and urinated, then laid panting for about five minutes. After that he seemed very confused and didn't know who I was or who our other (now completely hysterical) dog was. I took him to the vet, who said it was probably dehydration and I should make sure he always had water available.

Finally he started to become not just tired or confused but kind of lost. He'd kind of wander into the kitchen and beg, or find a way to always be in the way when I was carrying something heavy into the house. I saw him trying to go to the bathroom and a few drops of blood came out. We left to visit relatives, leaving our dogs with family, and when we got back he was wheezing and choking in spite of the Lasix.

I don't know why I'm writing all of this down. Maybe I'm still trying to make the case to myself that it had to be done. I am sure I am biasing the story, but I am the definition of an unreliable narrator so you have to live with that. All I can say is that this is what I saw and I am relating it to you as honestly as I can.

Finally we returned from our trip. I discussed it with my wife and she said she couldn't take him herself. I wanted to take him and be with him because I don't think you should have to go through that alone. Yesterday morning I woke up and he had urinated himself and his bed, and then walked through the house urinating. Typical. I don't think he was even aware he was doing it anymore, as he wasn't lifting his leg, just walking and peeing. I had stopped being mad at him for doing it a longt time ago.

I cleaned the house and called the vet, who didn't have any appointments until later. So I went to work but thought about it all day, and left early. I had read that dogs who have a pal can experience bereavement so I brought our other dog as well. I stopped at the cash machine and got money out, then went to McDonald's and bought a double cheeseburger meal.

On the way to the vet, I called to see if we could go straight in; I didn't want to be sitting in the waiting room with all of the other owners talking to him and looking at pictures of happy, healthy dogs who weren't about to die. Of course they were running late, and I got a little cross and asked when they could see him and they said ten minutes. So I sat out in the parking lot with the motor running and fed him french fries and cheeseburger pieces (I gave him one whole cheeseburger to himself and shared the other with our other dog) until the tech came out and said they were ready.

I had asked if I could speak to the vet beforehand; I still needed to hear a prognosis. I wasn't asking her to tell me what to do, that's not fair to the vet, but I did need her to tell me what his future looked like. She was very polite and professional; she listened to my description, looked at his chart, examined him and said that his heart was kind of oK, his lungs were congested, his bladder was failing either through stones or infection and he had severe arthritis. She also said that his pupils were different sizes, and based on his general demeanor while she was examining him that she thought it was likely he had brain damage due to either stroke or some kind of damage. I think she was making the case for herself and if she hadn't agreed with me that this was necessary she would have refused to do it or at least asked me to see another doctor.

She stated her opinion was that individually most of the symptoms were possibly treatable but the dementia was not. Even if they could resolve the other issues he would not be any more functional or outgoing than he was at the moment. I said it was time and I wanted to proceed with the euthansia. I wasn't especially upset - I was by no means happy or at peace with what was happening, though. I think it was mostly denial. We talked about the process, and she asked if I'd like the remains and said she had to go prepare but would send in a tech with the forms. I said I had my other dog and I would like to bring her in after so she could see him; I thought this might help her understand that he was not coming home. She said that was fine, and if I wanted to do that I should, because it wouldn't be right for me to feel like I should have done that.

She left, and I held him for a while and talked to him. Mostly he just stared at the wall but once he looked at me and stuck his nose toward me. It was pretty brief. The tech came in with the form and explained it to me, I looked at it but it could have been the deed to my soul for all I rememeber. They also wanted to be paid up front.

Finally the vet came in and we put him on the table; the idea was to give him a sedative to calm him and then a push of the fatal drug. She lifted his hind leg to give him the sedative and he started crying; his back legs were pretty immobile by that time and any time they were touched he would usually cry. She got about half the shot pushed in and he decided to lay down. I petted him and put my hand near his nose, where he could smell me. His eye was open and looking at me and he started making his usual snoring sound. I petted him and talked to him and at this point I became pretty emotional. At this point I am positive that the lights in the room flickered.

The vet did the second push and listened to his heart - in about 30 seconds I could feel his breathing start to slow and finally cease. A few minutes later she said "his heart's stopped" and I stood there with him for a while. The vet left us alone - I said thanks, and I meant it, though it sounded and felt awkward, it was the right word to use.

I brought our other dog in, and she was so wound up from an hour in the car that she was pretty boisterous. She stepped on him a couple of times, but twice she stopped and sniffed him for a good five seconds. Then she started licking my face, and I hugged him one more time and it was time to go.

Then I went and had two 7 & 7s and that was it. Now we just have to get used to life without him.

I hope this doesn't come across as excessively clinical - I don't mean to sound dispassionate. I just want to record the facts, because time smears them and makes things change in your recollection and I want to be clear about things. So this is to you, future self, not to make you relive the events but to know what they looked like at the time.

He was our dog, and he was a good dog, and it was time for him to go. I'm not sad about that. I'm sad that he got old, and sad that he had to go at all, and sad that we're older too. But I hope you remember him fondly, and you look at this as I am looking at it now; part of being a responsible pet owner and what you take on when you take responsibility for the life of an animal.

Long time no blog

Yep, it's been a while. Since September 2 I have been doing some things and going some places.

1. I went to Chicago and Moscow for a week each


2. Cleaned up about 14 years of crap from my HD (this should be a post some day)


3. Did some work and then some more work


4. finally got my subversion server set up with projects and autobuilds


5. found out the hard way why they tell you to keep home on a separate volume in a linux system - now I won't forget again

Currently I'm ignoring the pile of leaves in my yard and the fact I need new windows on the house in favor of pushing bits around. Priorities, you know.

30 Day Blog - recap and prediction

Well, that's over. Not a good result. Only wrote about 15 posts.

Why so few?

1. No focus - I really didn't want a cheese sandwich/emo blog and I didn't have a focus.


2. I had a number of what I thought were pretty good post ideas, but the time required to write them to what I thought was a good level of quality never materialized.


3. Need to link exchange and network - I didn't do this at all.


4. I have still not come to an internal resolution on the "real name" issue. The Kathy Sierra thing really disturbed me.

If I Ran An IT Department

This was a response I was going to write to a blogpost about how to get promoted. I'm not actually a manager, and probably won't become one, but the thesis of this person's article about updating your mgr was peppered with responses along the lines of "my work speaks for itself" and "I just want to code, what's with all the popularity stuff?"

I wanted to write something from what I think my perspective would be if I were a manager. My opinions are, of course, my own.

- - - -

I'll add something from a career of working at startups and big corporations - I've seen a lot of people come and go from the field.

There's also a balance between interpersonal skills and competence - there's a required minimal level of each, but in general interpersonal skills wins out over competence in most managerial eyes. Not because we want everyone to be best friends (and if you think that's all there is to interpersonal skills you need some more experience), but because having you around raises everyone's game and at the end of the day that's all that really matters.

It's the kind of thing often lampooned with bad bosses having "crazy hawaiian shirt day", etc but the need is quite real. Any manager will tell you that inspiration is one of many things we'd love to create by management but can't. It's gold - what makes people go the extra mile, run the extra test, speak up with the extra idea.

It's easy to create fear, and fear can be a workable substitute. You can pull the "continued employment is your incentive" bit for a while but eventually the ones who can leave do and you're stuck with the ones who can't or won't.

However, what you really want to consistently make and exceed numbers is a shop where people get something more than a paycheck from showing up everyday and giving 110 percent. Their common sense tells them that the check is for 100 percent of the work - they need something else for that extra 10.

I'd look for interpersonal skills first and technical competence second. And that isn't necessarily whoever's telling me the most about what they're doing for the department; remember, I talk and listen to everyone. I can see what others think of you, and what you think of everyone else.

I want interpersonal skills because leads with interpersonal skills draw on the best efforts of the entire department. A technical hotshot feels increasing pressure to have all of the answers, all of the time, and becomes an increasing PITA to work with as their new lead duties take away from their technical skills-building time. They crash by either burning out or blowing up and you have to start all over.

This also often happens to architects in the opposite direction; they're too interpersonal (especially the ones gunning for CIO jobs) and become about winning not just approval but validation from senior management. They turn into white-paper and Gartner report specialists instead of keeping their skills sharp. Makes for great golf games and happy hours and vendor-of-the-quarter delivery of bleeding-edge solutions that don't work.

Learn how to identify problems, take ownership of the solution, sell the solution, implement the solution and hand it off to someone else. Doesn't matter how small. If you can do that - consistently, even in the most narrow of niches - you will be extremely marketable, both as a resource to your boss and in the wider job market if you choose to go that route. We actually like that - if you know you can leave but choose to stay you do better work.

That said, I like to know what's going on with my staff, and try to maintain an open-door policy as much as possible. Drop-ins are fine, but remember that I will always try and make time for you - be courteous by scaling the discussion to the timeframe we have. I don't mind talking about something you just did for five minutes but I don't want to spend my whole open-door time hashing over your ingenious use of a weak-hash algorithm to store the login attributes (also, that seemed to be working fine the way it was, last I heard - did you just make that change on your own?)

If you choose just sit in your cubicle and code all day, no offense but you're basically a code factory - a tool. Tools are useful but we periodically seek upgrades, typically via replacement because a tool's cost and fragility goes up the longer you keep them and you can get a new, cheaper, less fragile model every couple of years.

Your work does not speak for itself - I don't read source code. I look at results because the people I serve only care about outcomes, not solutions.

13/30 - I did it!

Published an app I assembled from a lot of other parts that I actually use on my server. Neat-o! I want to improve it a little and then inflict it on the world.

12/30 - International News

I see the Russians have resumed incursion flights against NATO and US territories. That whole peace dividend thing was fun while it lasted.

If the Russians want to make an issue out of world domination again, this time they have the oil and we have...well, not really anyone. Maybe the British, though they are likely to think about it long and hard before picking up the lance and joining a battle on our side again.

11/30 Trouble on the HAN

I am trying to get my home network to be more cooperative about sharing files and printers. When I connect my work laptop via VPN to my corporate network, I lose connnectivity to my home printer.

I have tried activating the secondary network cards in the two machines and I get link lights but they won't talk to each other using the secondary interfaces. I've tried

route add 192.168.A.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 192.168.A.1 metric 1 IF 2

but this either does not work or takes out my ability to connect to the internet on the wireless NIC. No, I am not typing A.0 but I am paranoid and don't want to post my network specifics here too much. Secretive and technically stumped - the recipe for late nights at the keyboard.

Been reading a few posts about being a better IT person and I think networking might be something I should learn more about. At least so I can print.

10/30 Review - The Road, Cormac McCarthy and some post-apocalyptic fiction picks

Just read "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy tonight. Got it on reserve at the library this evening, read some of it while getting my hair cut and the rest of it just now.

Summary: moving book, powerful in its simplicity of prose and theme. I understand why it received a Pulitzer. McCarthy is of course an enigmatic and sought-after writer so that enhances the mystique of the book.

The clocks stopped at 1:17. A long shear of light and then a series of low concussions... is all that's provided for context. A cataclysm has happened some years before (the boy in the story was born just after the event but is now grade-school age), apocalyptic in its outcome but not the smoking cinder fate of bad sci-fi, more a slow bleeding out of all of the marvels of nature as the world slowly winds down and dies.

The description is congruent with the scientific models of the onset of nuclear winter and failure of the oxygen cycle following a mass nuclear exchange, but the result could have come from a comet/asteroid strike, a volcanic eruption or something else. The mechanism is not that important. Whatever it was has ruined many large cities, permanently darkened the skies and killed all plant and animal life, which means food has run out permanently. Only humans remain, feeding on what they can find, including each other. Days without sun and nights without stars blend together and a permanent winter is settling upon the world. Most importantly, hopelessness has settled as well, and much of humanity has fallen to savagery and cannibalism (Within a year there were fires on the ridge and deranged chanting. The screams of the murdered...he thought that in the history of the world it might even be that there was more punishment than crime but he took small comfort from it.)

Against this backdrop a man and his son struggle through the blasted landscape. They have been journeying for years, wandering, hiding, but the winters at their latitude have become too severe and they must move south to have a chance of survival. The man repeats that there may be hope at the coast, but deep down he seems to know that it's just a goal because without some kind of a goal they would be truly lost.

His wife, who delivered the boy just days after the cataclysm occurred (They sat at the window and ate in their robes by candlelight...and watched distant cities burn...A few nights later she gave birth in their bed), has recently taken her own life (I don't care, it's meaningless. You can think of me as a faithless slut if you like. I've taken a new lover. He can give me what you cannot. she says, speaking of Death).

The boy takes her suicide fatalistically, as he does most of the things they come upon with the exception of a basement full of human cattle being harvested by the cannibal tribes that roam the land feeding on the one renewable foodstuff - human beings. He is the new. He does not know anything else, and to him the skies have always been gray, and people are to be avoided. His father has tried to teach him, but the skills of reading and writing are not nearly as useful as being able to find water or hide quickly and well.

The man is the center of the story - he is the bridge between the old and the new. He has adapted well to the harsh new land but his dreams call him back to the former life, and he sees his father and father's father before him, watching and judging him.

They struggle through the land, and sometimes fortune smiles on them and sometimes it does not. They eventually reach the coast, and part company and the boy goes on his own was as the father always knew he would have to.

It's thinly hidden that this is an allegory about parenting, not just of one's own children but of the precious things that surround us - things we don't appreciate or even notice until they are threatened or destroyed. Once again we see the sentiment of the ennobling powers of parenthood The one thing I can tell you is that you won't survive for yourself. she tells the man during their final, brutal, truthful conversation when she is quitting, and he is not, and she hates him for it but nevertheless cannot continue.

McCarthy writes this novel as a love song in the form of a dirge, not just for his boy but about his own love for the boy. In a deeper sense - and this is what made the novel sing to me, since I don't have that kind of love in my own life - he's writing about fidelity and hope, two essential components of not just parenting but of holding back all of the more subtle forms of destruction constantly encroaching upon the world.

The Road is a deep and moving book, well-written in its simplicity (no names except for the generic "Rock City", though the Wikipedia entry seems to believe the man and his son are moving through Tennessee to the Alabama coast). His words and sentences are short, his character speeches are plaintive and although the man's internal dialogues go on and repeat themselves I find it completely believeable given his horrific situation.

I also find the milieu believeable - if the end comes in this way it won't be A Boy and His Dog or crummy Sci-Fi Channel movies with heavily armed people throwing bad attitudes. It's going to be like this, or most likely Testament; a flash of light, everything goes dead, the food stops coming and then people start to die. That's how it's probably really going down, and with over 10,000 nuclear weapons still on front-line status the dice are still pretty loaded.

Good writing is colorful. Great writing is simple. Less words leave more space for the mind to fill in with imagination, and the experience of imagination well-used is the secret hope of every fiction reader.

I think I will try reading another one of those author's books - if his prose is always this lean and muscular I would really enjoy seeing more of his work. I've previously said that the muse fades with age, as settling down silences the angst that fuels most artistic work. McCarthy is 74 years old and if he can still make time to conjure the muse it gives me some hope.

If you enjoy this genre, here are some books/movies which I have found especially moving:

• Testament - to me the definitive story of this genre.


• The Trigger Effect (all parts without Dermot Mulroney) - removing the craptacular soap-opera scenes, the premise and execution of this movie seem to me like the perfect update to the post-apocalyptic genre.


• The Day After - the original mega-event, but thought-out and resonant even today (although the 1983 effects have lost some of their specialness, Jason Robards and Amy Madigan do some of their best work),


• Miracle Mile - "Oh my god, is this 213?"


• Earth Abides, George R. Stewart - also moving in its simplicity, albeit with a more hopeful message. Compelling in its attention to the small details of life without us (I have not read the more recent book with that title)


• Lucifer's Hammer, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle - Old-school hard sci-fi big-time wrath-of-God type stuff. You can hear Irwin Allen screaming at his secretary to get him the option. Larry and Jerry are the OGs of hard sci-fi and I couldn't consider anything I'd ever be able to add to their genre.


• The Survivalist, Jerry Ahern - campy crap but if you ever want to know what to bring to the apocalypse this is like a product catalog. I devoured these books in high school dreaming of the day when I could afford a pair of Detonics .45s in their Alessi shoulder rigs to go with my Sting Ia black chrome boot knife. I hope Jerry got some bucks for product placement, I used to subscribe to Gun Digest and it never even had that much detail.

09/30 What I'm doing to get organized

So I have made a couple of posts about this goals thing, right? I've had an urge to make sense out of my scurrying and align my goals/objectives/projects/tasks myself. Maybe it's the need for a higher purpose, or to find room in my life for more important pursuits. I am not sure.

But, future self, without further ado here's what younger self has been doing as of late to organize things - I keep an outline using Natara Bonsai. I like it because it uses a PDA (which I carry with me) and the desktop, and keeps the two in synch so I can both update on my PDA but have more functionality on the desktop to edit, export, save, etc.

I used to organize my PDA by date and had a whole calendar breakdown of the year by action item. The problem with that was when I would get behind (and get behind I did, often) I would tend to wind up with this big moving train of projects I had to drag to the next day every day. It didn't work for me very well when things came up that had to go to the top of the stack (and things always come up).

So I have in the last couple of weeks reorganized things a little bit. I now have an outline with the following nodes:

• Goals



How I want to feel, what I need to accomplish in order to feel that way.




• Current tasks



Specific action items I need to complete. I try to keep this at no more than 20 but sometimes things pop on. For instance, I have to renew my car's license tabs, and I need to move forward on getting some contractor estimates so those got inserted at the top of the list. There's also production support stuff for work, but I created a sublist for that so I don't wind up getting mixed up about what's a change and what's a broken-you-gotta-fix-it-now item.

The rules for tasks are:




• Something I can accomplish without any outside intervention


• Something with a due date





After reading a few of the entries at Lifehacker and 37Signals, I am trying to keep every task in the form:

Verb the noun with the action by date.

I manage the due date using Bonsai and its interlink capability with Outlook. This is not always perfect but it's workable...so far.


• Active projects.

Projects I'm working on right now, that have a definite due date. The idea is that I ONLY work on these projects and not any of the other categories. This is tough, to be honest, but it's also the reason why I started this system in the first place.


• Pending projects.

Projects which are ready to start but are waiting for room on the active list. Again, they're more or less planned in terms of what needs to happen but I am trying to keep them on the back burner so I can focus on the active projects.


• Unplanned projects.

Catch-all; ideas, things I need to do but I have not worked out how to due them yet. I add steps, etc, and then when I feel like they're ready to start I put them into pending.


• Completed projects.

Obviously, completed projects. When I mark something done I drag it into here, and periodically archive the contents into DayNotez.

Some issues I have are:

• Recurring/ongoing stuff.

Every month I try to complete a list of maintenance tasks for the house - give the dogs their heartworm meds, check the water softener, change the furnace filter, etc. It's kind of a PITA to recreate this list every month, but I don't want to create an ongoing node because that will turn into a junk drawer.


• Maintaining focus on active projects and aggressively blocking non-active projects from my attention.

I have a really hard time saying no to requests and not jumping in to help when something goes wrong. That's just me, but it's not a positive trait because then there's other stuff that goes without attention. This is why I have started using this system, but the struggle is still there for me. Also, of course this is the real world and sometimes you have to drop what you're doing to work on something else.

08/30 Stone wall and some block-busters

Well, seven days in and I am hitting the wall. Nothing seems worth writing about.

Some ideas for block-busters:

1. Randomizer.
I have an idea for a tool that would cough out the core of a blog post for you, and you could just add in and fill in the blanks. Far from being a mechanical way to churn out posts I'd think it would be tremendously freeing and remove the drudgery and allow your writer to wander. Of course, I have to actually create the stupid thing.

2. Backlog of stories.
Like make-ahead soup - write them in batches and use the stock to fill in gaps. Haven't enough of a backlog yet, unfortunately. I can probably do this with the LIFE stories if I think about it hard enough. I also have ideas for entries but they require tons of research and I am just not blessed with that kind of focus.

3. Pick a random object in your sight-line.
This is Writer Camp 101. Just pick something, something you can see, and free write about it. The idea is not what you're writing, it's that you're writing.

Tomorrow I am walking in my 1st 5K since 2002, when I took 90 minutes to complete the course. I measured myself on a at-home 5K route last night and did it in 53:00 - we'll see if the inspiration of fellow walkers pumps me up or brings me down.

Followup 08/04/2007: I did not walk in the 5K. A late departure and bad weather pushed me off the activity wagon. I did, however, have a lovely day with my SO going to art fairs and farmer's markets, which was just as good (and better company). I will walk in a 5K this year, at least it's my goal to do so.

07/30 Minneapolis bridge collapse

Tonight at 6 PM the 35W bridge fell into the Mississippi River at the end of rush hour. Estimates are about 50 cars were on the bridge - everyone who came out above the rubble has been rescued but everyone below the rubble is believed to be (although emergency management is putting a nice face on it, they have changed terminology from "rescue" to "recovery" operation) lost.

My SO travels in the area and after the event I tried to reach them repeatedly with no result. Usually they call me immediately on big news as so as time went by and I both couldn't reach them and didn't hear back I got more and more worried. I was finally preparing to head downtown to find the Red Cross family center when they called and explained what had happened.

It's funny what runs through your head in times like that - I think I was not dealing with my worry by thinking about the issues that would come from bereavement. I didn't want to take time off, sitting home climbing the walls and thinking of them would be the worst thing I could think of, but coming right back to work cheapens what they meant to you. Maybe I am too detached.

Watching the non-stop reports on TV, I went back to a phrase I'd heard from the Bible. It seems inappropriate but something is nagging me about this so I will post it:

King James Bible
Book of Luke, Chapter 13

1. There were present at that season some that told him of the Galilaeans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.


2. And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things?


3. I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.


4. Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?


5. I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

Addendum
From a Strib editorial. I was getting ready for work yesterday morning watching Matt Lauer do some cupcake piece and thinking "Yep, dog days, nothing going on, no real news to report". The editors at the Strib administered the following richly deserved karmic bitch slap to me with tomorrow's editorial on the disaster:

There will be more for everyone to do. For now, none of us can know with certainty that we did not lose friends yesterday. To those who are mourning a loss, the community will show support and solidarity.

Some in the news business had been complaining lately about the lack of news. They spoke of the dog days. Yesterday we learned once more that everything can change in an instant, and that to lament a slow news day is a sin.

6 down, 24 to go.

06/30 LIFE project

This post is an overview of the LIFE (Lose It For Ever) study, which I joined about eighteen months ago in November of 2005. The study was intended to assess the efficacy of different approaches to weight loss.

Volunteers were recruited via advertisements in local newspapers, which is where I saw the ad I answered. Each volunteer paid $50 for participating in the project and needed to meet specific BMI & health goals to qualify (I was one pound under being too fat to participate).

The material presented was in six modules, and the study volunteers were divided into two tracks.
Group A - attended every week for eight weeks with five week breaks
Group B - attended every other week ongoing, tapering off over time


The modules were

Module 1 - Calorie counting

Module 2 - Pedometers

Module 3 - Meal replacements (Slimfast and planned menus)

Module 4 - Exercise

Module 5 - Structured menus (Traffic Light diet)

Module 6 - Contracts


Group A focused on one module at a time. Group B mixed data from each module. I was part of Group A. I lost about 45 pounds (low point during meal replacements) and gained back about 12 pounds after that module ended. Every six months we went in for psychologial and physical examinations.

In following posts I will provide more details of the LIFE modules.

7 down, 23 to go.

05/30 20 Types of Blog Posts and where's my ring?

(Note: I was sitting here typing and suddenly noticed I'm not wearing my wedding ring, which I very rarely take off. I'm really concerned but a cursory search of the house has turned up nothing, so I am hoping I took it off at work while I was repairing a white board. This is really upsetting to me, so I'm turning in kind of a half-finished entry tonight. If anyone reads this, I'd appreciate some good thoughts as I really hope it isn't lost.)

(update - found it! yay! I moved a chair and plop it landed on the floor. It's not funny but it's funny how I don't notice it very often but when it's gone I literally can't think of anything else. I am also a little disturbed at this twice-yearly ritual...one does think of Alzheimer's...)

So I was trying to find a way to formalize the content, so I would be filling in an outline instead of staring at a blank page and fighting the Idea Demon for a scrap of inspiration. I googled a little and found a couple of really interesting posts about different types of blog entries:

Original list (Darren Rowse) : He's just got an interesting site period, but this post inspired me to try and use this structure for the 30 day project. All idea credit for this is his.

Challenge (bunnygirl): She was going to write one post of each type and keep track of it, which she did.

So what if I am eighteen months late to the party. I am going to do it anyway, besides it will get me through the next 20 days and by then I should either be rolling on my own or off watching Tivo and wondering why my life still sucks.

Here's the list - I stole the HTML from bunnygirl's site, tablefied it, and added a space to link the post once I have it written. I took the initial definitions from Darren and tried to rewrite into something I can understand. I also tried to group related types of posts.

She struck the posts as she did them and I will do the same:

The 20 Types of blog posts are: (Why is Blogger's table handling so sucky?)

Type	Definition	Post
Contrasting Options	contrast products, services or approaches that outlines the positives and negatives of each choice.	Pending
Informational	Define or expand on a concept. Will either be a literature review, a research, a link or a rant.	Pending
Instructional	Tell people how to do something. If you include items from somewhere else it's a link or literature review.	Pending
List	Brief list of phrases or sentences around a theme or question, and develop each into a paragraph or two. Must be your own content. Probably a instructional or informational at heart.	Pending
Literature Review (Darren called it a Collation Post, some people call it a sling blade...)	Like research but more semantic than empirical. Identify a question, but instead of empirical data, research what others have written/said. Collect everyone’s ideas (with short quotes) and tie them together with a few of your own comments to draw out the common themes that you see.	Pending
Research	pose a question that can be empirically answered gather data (if you are reading and quoting from other people's work it's a survey, not research) assemble the data into a usable form make inferences, find conclusions	Pending
Inspirational	Tell a story of success or paint a picture of ‘what could be’.	Pending
Interview	Interview (1 or 2 questions, you are not Playboy) or a guest post.	Pending
Profiles	Do some background research on an interesting person. Point out how they’ve reached the position they are in and write about the characteristics that they have that others in your niche might like to develop to be successful.	Pending
Hypothetical Posts	Pick a something that ‘could’ happen down the track in your industry and articulate implications.	Pending
Memes and Projects	Suggest an idea, offer a poll, solicit a memetic sense of a topic or situation.	Pending
Prediction and Review Posts	Doesn't have to be December 31 - this would be fun to do the night before your birthday or anniversary. Review what happened this year Make predictions for next year (good time for a list)	Pending
Critique	Find positives in what others do and make constructive suggestions for improvements.	Pending
Debate	Between two people, between a blogger and ‘all comers’ or even between a blogger and themselves.	Pending
Link	link to a post/article but add your own commentary & insight so you don't get flagged as a spammer (which my old blog did repeatedly)	Pending
‘Problem’ Posts	Review negatives of a product or service, along with suggested solutions/workarounds.	Pending
Rant	sound off, one two, sound off, three four...	Pending
Review</dt>	Share your opinion and ask readers for their opinion. Opinions are conclusions based on provable facts. Rants are attacks in the form of opinions based on other opinions, or data which cannot be sourced.	Reviewed Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"
Satirical	See The Onion.	Pending

6 down, 24 to go. I hope I find my ring.

04/30 JackFest

Went to JackFest last night, a friend of mine had tickets for a suite at the Xcel and was good enough to invite me, so I went with him. Saw four acts:


The Gin Blossoms

Quick, name a hit of theirs besides "Hey Jealousy". They played their songs and got out. It's never good when the lead singer tells the crowd "We're used to only playing places with a Ferris Wheel." Yes, it's the part of the rock and roll lifestyle that nobody ever talks about; they focus on Bowie and Clapton and ignore the Wal-Mart greeter-lever gigs most big bands wind up playing (speaking of which, Canned Heat was at the Narrows last night and Bill Halley and the Comets were at the Medina - unless they're wheeling coffins up on stage there's some serious inheritance going on there.)


The Pretenders

I am of the era but never liked the Pretenders, so I was ready to snooze through this. I did not appreciate what a great showwoman Chrissy Hynde is. She really made their set fun to watch and their performing after the Blossoms stood around and played instruments got the crowd re-engaged.


The Stray Cats

Best show of the night, best show in a long time. Fun fact: I had previously seen the Cats in their first Minneapolis show waaaaay back when they opened for the Rolling Stones at the same location (when it was the St. Paul Civic Center). I was too young to go myself so I went with my dad's secretary. Anyway, they've just reformed and this was the first show of their tour. It was great! They sounded great, they interacted well and Brian Setzer is the reincarnation of Eddie Cochran. I wonder if Jack Knife and the Sharps and The Reverend Horton Heat and all the other outfits that have been stealing the Cats' act for the last 25 years were in the audience.

Worth the price of admission all on its own. They did a version of "Lights Out" that would have made any rockabilly spirit smile.


ZZ Top

Um...yeah. Maybe time to hang it up. Some signs your band is well past its prime:

• Your "stage show" is an LCD screen running a WinAmp visualization.


• You randomly stop singing in the middle of songs because you know the audience is singing every word along with you.


• You are, shall we say, casual about things like hitting notes and keeping the beat.


• You have obviously oft-repeated stories introducing your songs. ("Jewelry! Jewelry!")


• You have exactly one new song, during which everyone goes and gets drinks and goes to the bathroom.

The Crowd

This wasn't an act, just observations about my fellow concert-goers. Gen X is getting older. The guy with the mohawk and bald spot? Dude, the "O-hawk" is never going to catch on. But there we are, all hip and cynical and watching the Daily Show between baby feedings.



5 down, 25 to go.

09/30 Eight Random Facts about Me

Been trying to do some research for blog entry ideas and found this: Eight Random Facts about Me. Basically put down eight random things about yourself and then pass it along to others. I don't know any other bloggers so I am not sure whom I would send this to, but here it goes for me.

• I am a terrible insomniac. Have been since childhood. I used to wait for my parents to go to sleep and then went out in the kitchen (where they couldn't see the light) and read till 4-5 in the morning. Tried the Steve Pavlina thing, tried sleeping pills, tried getting up at 6, etc. Only does a little good for a little while.


• I recently joined a university long-term weight loss study and lost about 30 pounds. I'll be writing some posts about that...later.


• Every serious romantic partner I've ever had was born in August to parents who worked in IT. Everyone. Yes, multiple.


• I had some brief Internet notoriety after writing a fictional case study of the zombie apocalypse (and I do mean brief and limited). However, it was enough to prompt a fanzine editor to look me up for a rewrite, which I did but never got published. i'll put it up somewhere and add a link, should have it somewhere.


• I have zero talent for Scrabble. I love to read and write, I love obscure words and I'm usually pretty good at word games but I cannot play Scrabble to save my life. I am terrible at it.


• I'm terribly shy. I have a couple of close friends that I've known since high school but I have never mastered the arm's length - neighborhood group - happy hour buddy thing that's so crucial to networking. I can't even do it on the internet and that's supposed to be the great micro-interest bazaar, for crying out loud.


• When I was younger (child of 9), I had a debilitating disease that kept me in the hospital and then bedridden at home for the better part of a year. The next year my parents split up and I moved to another state for a year. That didn't work out, so I came back, but in the interim all of my friends had changed from 9 year olds to 12 year olds and I really didn't fit in anywhere. So I read a lot and I have never really been close to more than 1-2 people at a time. Not an excuse, just a reason.


• Once at a work happy hour, someone asked everyone one of those questionnaires where you name a set of images that come into your head. At one point they had you picture an animal - I pictured a bear, happy enough to live in the woods eating fish and not really looking for trouble, really pretty shy unless you threatened its family or pushed it the wrong direction on the wrong day, in which case it would tear you apart. Turns out that question was how you see yourself. I tend to agree.

5 down, 25 to go.

03/30 Life Skills for Children

This is a post idea from my SO. Apparently in a work conversation the issue came up about what ages kids should be learning what skills. Of course this is a general guide and I really don't know what I'm talking about, but I've never let that stop me before and I don't intend to start now.

Age 7

• Neighbors names


• Home address and who they should and should not tell


• No unsupervised computer access


• Difference between storybooks and news about real people


• Dress selves, make own breakfast


• That there are things people do that are bad, but they feel good so people do them anyway. Some of their friends might want to do some of that bad stuff, and it might seem like they are having fun but they are not going to have fun for very long and then they are going to have a lot of sadness. Most people don't do those things, and if they get invited or they see kids doing stuff they can just leave, call us or go to a safe house and we won't yell at them. They can always get new friends but you can't get a new you.

Age 9

• Family names and jobs


• Should be able to find their way home from anywhere in neighborhood


• No unsupervised computer access


• That people have different opinions and you don't have to change your opinion if someone disagrees with you, and they don't have to change their opinion if you disagree with them.


• It's better to be sorry before you do something than after.


• Clean house, make simple packaged foods


• Without a lot of graphic details, that there are things called drugs and sex and bullying and what they should do if they run into specific things like someone offering them drugs or sex, or if they see bullying or are bullied.

Age 11

• Extended family names and jobs


• Should be able to navigate you home from various places in the city


• Own email account with talk about how many people on the internet are not who they seem to be, and that the computer connected to the internet is like a door into our house; once you let someone in, and they know that they can get in, it can be hard to make them leave.


• They should be able to explain why they like or don't like something.


• Specifics of drugs/alcohol and sex, and that people do it because it feels good but those good feelings don't last, and when they're gone all you want is to get them back. So then you start looking for those good feelings all of the time, and you ignore the things are hard now, but feel so much better when you do them.


• Sort laundry, mow grass, do basic work like change a lightbulb, etc

Age 13+

• forget it - they're teenagers, they're doing whatever they want and will just blame your poor parenting skills for whatever trouble they get into. Listen to them, check up on them, let them make their own mistakes as long as they're not catastrophic. Protect them, love them, fight with them for their own well-being. Ignore their hatred and wait for the storm to pass.

4 down, 26 to go.

02/30 Effective Time Management

I said I would post every day, and this probably won't get saved until tomorrow so I already missed out. I can weasel and say 30 days = 30 posts and get away with it.

The reason I posted so much about setting goals and cascading them to objectives is because so much activity seems to be simply for activity's sake, and not to support some larger mission in life. (What's it all about, Alfie?)

I was hoping by writing down all of those terms and specifics, I would be able to define my own outlook and goals. I did do a lot of reorganizing of my personal items last night so maybe it did some good.

One of the things that had always stymied me about goal-setting, etc was that the goals seemed so arbitrary - "make a bazillion dollars", etc. They seemed so plucked out of a hat, so MTV-driven.

For me, looking at this in terms of feelings seemed to help a lot - instead of asking myself "what do I want", I asked myself "how do I want to feel? Who am I?"

I don't know what it will do in the long run but for now it seemed to help.

A good book in this field is "I Don't Know What I Want, But I Know It's Not This" by Julie Jansen. It has tests, etc that try to identify some personality traits and interests that might be useful to you in your job search.

3 down, 27 to go.

01/30 Goals, Objectives and Tasks

One of the big movements on the web (that I'm currently aware of, anyway) is the Getting Things Done movement pioneered by David Allen. Rather than comment on GTD or on the billions of sites, articles and sub-pages dedicated to implementing GTD, I'd like to focus on what I usually focus on when understanding a system - defining terms.

The terms themselves are pretty universal but their definitions are open to interpretation (and it's the interpretations of terms that makes a system, and a system is what people want to sell, so of course there's different definitions depending on what's being sold to you).

Anyway, here's my nominal list, and guess what - I am not the sole authority on the Internet so YMMV. The idea is not to complicate your life, the idea is to create a mental model of all of these things so you can organize your efforts and compact your to-do list.

Goal

A goal is an abstract state or property you desire, something that is felt or perceived more than seen or used: I want to be financially secure.

Feature

A feature is a specific state or property, something that can be seen, felt or used (think of it as an embodiment of the nature of one or several goals) - goals and features can have a many-to-many relationship. Think of the features as proof of reaching the goal. In the example above, the following features show that the goal has been achieved:

• I have three months' salary in near-liquid assets, to draw upon in case of a change


• I spend less than I make


• I operate on a planned budget

The key is that the features are all positive statements of measureable things and act to prove that you've reached the goal. This is a critical function because it tells you (a) what you need to do, (b) how to know when you're done and (c) when it's time to consider the goal achieved. It seems like the emptiness many people suffer from a sense of dissatisfaction upon "achievements" stems from not tying those achievements to their goals, their desired states of feeling. Unfortunately that kind of introspection seems to only arise during a mid-life crisis.

Objective

Objectives are a stated intention/definition of what needs to be done to implement a feature. It's the top-level definition for a project, which is a set of tasks and metrics. Continuing with the above example:

• Be financially secure




• Have three months' salary in near-liquid assets, to draw upon in case of a change




1. Get three months' savings into a near-liquid asset




• Spend less than I make




1. Spend less


2. Make more




• Operate on a planned budget




1. Create and maintain a budget

Project

A project is a collection of tasks and metrics with the express purpose of implementing an objective. The projects are not the stuff you write on your to-do list every day; they're the guiding ideals behind your daily actions. This congrues with real life if you consider your daily projects to support the objectives of goals like staying alive, maintaining employment, caring for your family, etc.

Task

A task is an activity necessary to complete a project. Projects have many kinds of tasks: control tasks, environment tasks, maintenance tasks, training tasks, even delegation tasks. More on this some time in the future.

Metric/Measure

A metric or measure can exist at any level but is generally tied to either a task, project or objective. This is part of my own implementation - goals do not have measures in my mental view - the features are the metrics of the goals. Metrics are specific, measureable and repeatable. In the case above, a metric might be the specific balance to maintain in the asset, or the spending cap/spending amount in the budget,or the interest rate on the asset. Metrics are usually summary numbers (sum, average, mean, count, etc) but can also be non-numeric (a present or absent state, a letter grade, etc).

There's a section to add here on business management taxonomy but I have to get to work. Hopefully later.








2 down, 28 to go.

30 Days of Blogging

So I have a blog, and occasionally I make posts to it, most of which are maudlin dispositions and ruminations on the inexorable nature of age and entropy.

I think it's because this blog isn't really -about- anything, and if you read tech news you get a lot of input that basically nobody reads a blog unless you happen to be a columnist, or Guy Kawasaki, or Martin Fowler, or Cory Doctorow or you write a provocative title and get picked up by Digg or popurls (bane of my working existence).

It's the Larry Niven effect; every time I feel like writing sci-fi I look at his stories and think "how the hell could I possibly add anything to this genre?" or of course horror/mystery with King, screenplays with the likes of Scorcese and Tarantino, etc. And every time I write a blog it winds up with "what's it matter anyhow?"

I'd like to change this, specifically because I want to:

• Redevelop my writing habit - I recently worked with someone on a little collaborative fiction (we swapped story ideas we were stuck on) and it felt pretty good. I could use a little feeling good right now.


• Do a little goal and interest exploring - maybe writing is still open to me as an option?

So I will never be famous. So I will probably never even get paid for anything besides my Paint Check article from the 1990s (mental couch note: maybe link that). I have to be OK with that if this is going to work.

So here's my thesis and rules. My rules in this case are to keep this from turning into yet another half-a-page-of-scribbled-lines project:

1. Create 1 blog entry every day for 30 days.


2. Write in the morning if possible, just so you can have it done early.


3. No blogging from work.


4. NO encoded personal stuff, no "I should X, why can't I X, why do I suck so much, what a terrible person I am" type dramatics.


5. Flash fiction is OK if you must, but use some restraint, old boy.


6. Blog entries have to have a structure:
   
   
   
   • Thesis - something the entry is about, not just "here's something from the news and now I am going to whine about my fecklessness and inability to X"
   
   
   • Supporting point 1
   
   
   • Supporting point 2
   
   
   • Observation
   
   
   • Summary
   
   
   
   

So what if I am not Penelope Trunk, who to me is the perfect blogger. She's observant, insightful, writes from a basis of real-world experience, is brutally honest and gives others a chance to share their perspective.

So what if no one is reading. The important thing is that I am writing, and the potential that these entries will be read someday means that I need to put at least a modicum of craftsmanship into them. Maybe that will help me find a little personal and professional direction. We'll see.

1 down, 29 to go.

Three Chick Flicks and their Unintended Message`

Analysis from a prof at UW-Green Bay of the unintended message of three popular female-oriented films. Very thought-provoking. Maybe I need to see the world like this. I think his thesis makes sense.


Note to future self: the issue seems to be immediate gratification versus ongoing struggle. Were you right? Were they? Did it all work out, because right now there was just a conversation that makes it seem like it will not, and once you decide it will not it finds a way to come apart.

Can you really be as happy as you make up your mind to be?

IT tonight

Big storms in the metro - stupidly left the dogs outside. Should know better than to do that.

Tonight:

• Fixed the PHP problem on my Ubuntu server - PHP was disabled by the upgrade and I had a cached version of the page so even when I fixed it, I didn't know it.


• Installed and configured a MediaWiki for work.


• Deployed BusinessWorks project to tarchive documents in accumulator directory, compress, timestamp them and upload to a remote server.


• Finally got my conf file to restrict access to certain pages in the domain to my local server.


• SOA Governance meeting - challenge as always is not the technology, it's the process and the people getting along. Need to find a way to make small-scale services, not a big moon shot that enervates everyone and tanks the ROI before anything is usable.

Note to future self: How long did all the electronic stuff last? Bits don't get dusty, they just go away. Do you still read these posts? Does anyone have meaningful records from this era?

More content...please

Working on some work-type issues, writing late at night. I recently killed one of my older blogs because I want to have a real Miller blog. One of the problems I had with the old blog is that when I write I get introspective, which quickly turns to maudlin depression and then I start writing about personal stuff I don't even want to think about, let alone turn over to permanent Internet custody with my name on it.

I think this is called the process of finding your voice. Obviously I am still looking. I could make this a multi-subject blog, where I could just write about things I'm interested in. I tried that with the old one but it just turned into posting links and bitching about hard-hearted capitalists and the lobbyists who love them. No one wants to read that.

What do they want to read? What do -I- want to read?


Today's note to future self:
Did you ever answer that question, future self? At the age I am now it seems like there are not that many new horizons for me.

Ideas for future blog posts:

1. Personal finance, specifically building a portfolio. I'd like to find a good investment club. Maybe I should start one, with all this, you know, free time I have while I'm working at 11:55 PM.


2. Bible study in a year? No I don't want to join the evangelistas, in fact I have a great deal of contempt for what they've led us into, but I do feel the need for spiritual refreshment and maybe a 1 year Bible study would do the trick?


3. Certification exam. Yawn. Just thinking about it bores me. God.


4. Something else techie....maybe writing but probably not. I think my muse has finally died. She still likes to play Battleflag and Up North for me every now and then, but I think my left brain reigns supreme and right-y is down for the count. Who knows, I thought that in '94 too and then City of Angels and Nightcrawlers came along.

Music:

All These Things I've Done, The Killers
Chinese Burn, Curve
Where'd You Go, Fort Minor

Note from XKCD

I can have notes to you from other places if I want.


When I used to say to her that we should do something sometime, I was always secretly hoping she'd say 'Why not now?'

Something to come back and fill out later

Step 1 - Define your passion:
What “fires you up”? For some people the answer to this question is very obvious. For others, it is a little more difficult.


If you are facing difficulty giving a definite answer set aside 30 minutes to answer three questions:

* What would I want my life to be like when I am 60?
* What do I want to have accomplished 5 years from now?
* What are the three things I would want to do if I only had 6 months to live?

Each question will have several answers. Choose the top three answers for each question.

Iraq

So, future self, there's no propaganda here, just a note about how it is now. The war is the lead item on every newscast. Since the election the Democrats have been emboldened to fight with Bush about the war, and there are big protests (again) today about bringing troops home.

The enemy also has a new tactic - they just showed up at an American base wearing American uniforms and speaking English and they grab soldiers, take them off and kill them.

The mood seems to be that of resignation. No one but Bush and his cronies are talking about winning (in terms of defeating al-Queda) any more; now it's about how to turn this mess over to the Iraqis, who are locked in civil war.

So there are no good options. I think that the war was a crime and an abomination and Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Chalabi should be tried and imprisoned for what they did to get us to this place. I have given up on the Catholic church for some of the stuff they did around this war, as well as blowing off friends I really cared about because I just can't accept their enthusiastic approval of what we're doing. I'm too old and fat and defective to fight so I never joined the service and can't be part of that conversation.

That said, for whatever reasons, the fact is that we invaded that country and destroyed its government. We dawdled and mismanaged and allowed the forces of chaos to sprout there. If we just leave, or talk about leaving to the point where everyone just assumes we're going to leave, we leave the civilians - the ones the peace protestors claim to be so concerned about - to the tender mercies of people like those who ran the torture house discovered by the MN NG. A lot of Iraqis have put their lives on the line - literally their lives - to help us and if we disengage and leave them, well, "The Killing Fields" pretty much summed the next part of that story up.

We are not obligated to keep putting brave kids in the meat grinder for an incompetent execution of a war based on a lie. But we are morally obligated to take responsibility for what we did, what we created over there and I'm getting worried that a lot of the perennial peace organizations are making hay with the "Out Now!" line to promulgate their own influence without concern or regard for the situation for the people we were ostensibly saving.

I don't know how it will turn out. I hope we find a way, either with our military or someone else's help, to stablize the country and give those people their lives back without creating an al-Queda state, an Iranian satellite or Taliban Afghanistan with easy access to the oil fields.

Another note for you - the yellow ribbons are gone from all the SUVs now and have been for a long time. They started disappearing around the time of Abu Ghraib. There's a poem Mark Bowden reprinted in his Black Hawk Down series, go find it.

What happened, future self? How did we get out of this one? Whichever way it went down, we should be ashamed, and the people who should be most ashamed are likely to feel no shame at all. They never do. Maybe it's how they get to be those kind of people in the first place.

Note to Older Self - The Diet Thing

So, older self, let's talk about the diet thing for a minute. You are sitting somewhere in the future and you're either fatter or thinner than me as I write this (262.0). I would like to get to 249 this year.

Do you remember this time (LIFE, March 2006 - January 2007 and beyond) as the beginning of something great or just a false dawn? My motto these days is "these are tomorrow's good old days." I am sick of nostalgia because those times were not perfect, and so I am trying to do things now so I will enjoy having done them later. Like the LIFE thing.

Remember the mirror at Italianni's and how that felt. Remember it and if you don't I'll remind you. You caught yourself in the mirror and you didn't recognize you for a minute, you just saw a ridiculously fat guy who looked like a freak. Then you recognized the freak was you.

Now you're doing the thing and you weigh yourself every day and you try to act like your food intake is coming from a budget of calories, not that you're tired or you're sad or that it tastes good or that your mind is racing on some ridiculous idea and the eating like chewing your nails but with food.

Did you give up on that? Was it easier to go back? These days you tell yourself that the chocolate/fat/sugar/salt tastes good for about 10 seconds, but being able to buy clothes off the rack that doesn't have some integer XL multiplier tastes good for ever and ever.

Did that work? Did any of it stick? I hope to God it did. I hope, I hope, I hope. Because I am kind of doing this for me, but mainly I am doing it for you. And I hope you will do it for your future self.

You are not doing as well on the activity part but I am trying to blame that on the winter. It's cold, dammit. I am hoping to start a weightlifting program that I can actually follow. How did that go? Did you accomplish anything, and stick with what you accomplished?

Did you quit on me? I can believe you did, and I can believe you didn't. Please don't let me down, future self. For this one thing, this one time, don't let me down.

I don't care if you don't get back to 190 or whatever unrealistic thing. I'd like to get into the 230s but that's a bonus. I will never be disappointed in you unless you just totally give up and go back to the old stuff. That's all. If you keep trying, really trying, even if you're not successful I will be proud of you.

But remember this, because it's pretty obvious to me right now - it's not all at once. You fail or succeed a little bit at a time and like Einstein said it's the compound interest that's the miracle. Watch the scale. The scale is objective. It doesn't care if you're lonely or sad or Mommy didn't love you enough or whatever. It doesn't care. The laws of physics do not make an exception for you.

Dawn of the Dead unreleased soundtrack

Came today. The Gonk, Mask of Death, etc...

So you, future self, might be in Alzheimer's-induced fog and wondering what you saw in DOTD and why you went to ZombieCon and wrote A-137 and collected memorabilia.

Well, all I can say is that this younger self still finds even the music of Dawn of the Dead powerfully inspiring for dark visions of...being outnumbered and fighting a losing battle against the forces of chaos or impartiality.

You remember what the commercials did to you when you were a kid, the nightmares they caused. By the time you saw the movie there wasn't anything in it that could scare you anymore. And the violence is not like "Saw" or any of that grand guglinol sjoy where the evil is enjoying its role. It's the sleeping giant, Cthulu crushing by simply rolling over in its sleep. It's something that is doing what naturally comes to it, and that's what's always terrified you - that the natural world, whether a shark, global warming or a risen army of the undead is just living its nature and gobbling us up.

Like a truck. But that's not for public consumption. At dinner the other night someone talked about that and we had a little Q&A where you learned something about it. I was surprised at how much it still affects me. I can't even remember that much about the person, a few things, but I remember how much I liked him and how completely unfair it was and that's when I realized it didn't matter who you were, the world rolls on like a big rock and it crushes (or eats) us without fear or favor. Or reason. Or justice.

So DOTD still moves you, but not for the reason it moves most people. It's the rising inexorable tide, plus Romero's talent and just the fact it's a great movie.

But the dreams remain. And sometimes you wake up and your arm is numb again, or they're climbing up the sides of the skyscraper and you're at the top with a nuke, but maybe you wired the detonator right and maybe you didn't. But that's nothing new.

Do you still have those dreams, older self? Or do you dream about eating soup now, like Bob Newhart?

Calories

Weight is driven by physics and chemistry. They don't care about how sad you are or if you're tired or if your back hurts.

That heart attack/stroke/TIA you're now having is a demonstrable outcome of the choices I am making today and tomorrow. You could have prevented them by just doing a little more, trying a little harder, making do with some pain today to avoid the pain tomorrow.

Meyers-Briggs: Today I am an INTP

Your Type is
INTP

Introverted	Intuitive	Thinking	Perceiving
Strength of the preferences %
44	25	12	33

INTP type description by D.Keirsey
INTP type description by J. Butt


Qualitative analysis of your type formula
You are:

• moderately expressed introvert
  
• moderately expressed intuitive personality
  
• slightly expressed thinking personality
  
• moderately expressed perceiving personality

Star Trek meets Monty Python

Yes, I did have a little nerdgasm when I saw this. Very creative use of clipping.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=luVjkTEIoJc

39 Monty Python sketches (from Clipmarks)

Yes, Python lives on on YouTube, where apparently every single image ever shown on television anywhere has gone home to roost.

BUT

before I post the Python link, here's a link to a xkcd cartoon about Python that gives one pause to reflect.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/monty_python.jpg


Here's the links to the Python shows.

http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/2217AD94-AAB8-42B5-83BD-C9BCB9275948/

Exoparasitism

The Ampulex wasp traps its prey (common cockroaches) by paralyzing the roach and modifying its cerebral cortex, after which the roach becomes completely docile. The wasp then leads the roach into a cavern and attaches an egg to the roach, who sits there calmly while the egg hatches, the larva eats its way into and gestates inside the roach and then eats its way out.

Not science fiction - reality: http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2006/02/02/the_wisdom_of_parasites.php

So...natural selection at work here? How many wasps had to sting how many cockroaches for that right neural cluster to be hit?

Ok, so...design? What entity that represented any sort of good would deliberately engineer something so horrific?

One of These Days...

I hear this Pink Floyd song and I think of a friend of mine from back in the day. Let's call her Jules. She worked at Pizza Hut, and she was friends/kind of a flame with one of my best friends, and I went in there one day with him and she's written on the white board (where they put the specials) "One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces!". The customers thought it was a pizza slogan but not so much, no. I liked her from that day on.

Haven't seen her in 10 years but whenever I hear that song I think of her, and that whiteboard, and it makes me smile. I know I hang on to these memories for too long and nobody remembers me like that, so it's kind of embarrassing but this is a blog and nobody's reading anyway and it's something I think about, so there.

What a waste of time is a blog.